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Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland?

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Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland?

POSTED: Monday, March 23, 2009, 5:20 PM

Carrie Rickey, Film Critic

Judy Garland, left, played by Anne Hathaway?

Just got the news that The Weinstein Company has optioned Gerald Clarke's splendid Judy Garland biography, "Get Happy." And that willowy beauty Anne Hathaway is expected to star as the diminutive dynamo whom mogul Louis B. Mayer liked to call "my little hunchback."

My kneejerk reaction was: How can a bona fide stunner -- perhaps the most gorgeous woman in Hollywood since Ava Gardner -- play the famously insecure Garland who was envious of Gardner, her sister MGM star?

Then I started thinking about about Hathaway's and Garland's similarities: Both were perky teen stars who made their names in family films and then surprised everyone with their dramatic chops. Hathaway has a lovely voice, but it will take some work for her to develop the Garland vibrato that massaged the hearts of its listeners.

What's great about Clarke's book is that it breaks the template of the typical biopic. It's both tragic and triumphal, and doesn't wallow in its subject's self-destruction.

Your thoughts, kneejerk or otherwise? Can you think of a better casting choice?

8 comments

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Comments (8)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 5:41 PM, 03/23/2009

Talent-wise, she probably could do it. Physically, though, she seems too tall & stately. Then again, Philip Seymour Hoffman did well as Capote despite the size difference. Too bad Liza's too old, though maybe she could do the vocals?

— MojoMama

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 5:49 PM, 03/23/2009

No surpise here, Carrie. When I saw her in "Rachel Getting Married," the Judy Garland connection came right away. She seemed to be doing an impersonation of latter-day Garland in that film. Good casting. But no word on the director, right?

— Pash

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 6:13 PM, 03/23/2009

All I can say about this is that I think it might work. She doesn't seem like Judy Garland to me, but she did seem pretty neurotic in "Rachel," to say the least, so that part works. I'll take this opportunity to mention how much I enjoyed the Edith Piaf movie, was it called La Vie en Rose? That was a great biopic. And I saw it on the plane to Paris and back. Perfect!

— DanielJ

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 7:01 PM, 03/23/2009

Though it always seems to be folly to try to act an iconic star, there are always exceptions. For example: Tammy Blanchard and Judy Davis were brilliant as Judy Garland in LIFE WITH JUDY GARLAND: ME AND MY SHADOWS. In a made-for-TV miniseries based on Garson Kanin's MOVIOLA, a whole bunch of wannabes sunk trying to imitate Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, etc. but a little known Swedish actress named Kristina Wayborn was stunning as Greta Garbo. (Whatever happened to her? She had a stint as a Bond girl and that was it.) So it could work or it couldn't work. But in terms of Ava Gardner: Judy Garland really had a mental block about her. She used to tell the story of going to the MGM school with Lana Turner (her best friend at the time), Deanna Durbin (for a brief two-month period), Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper... and then she'd always mention Elizabeth taylor. Which would have been impossible, because in 1938-39 (when Garland had to be in school according to the child-labor laws) Elizabeth Taylor was 4 years old and in London. But there was a brunette beauty who arrived at MGM at the age of 17 in 1939, and she would have been sent to the MGM classroom (accompanied by her sister Beppi because her parents didn't trust wicked old Hollywood), and that would have been Ava Gardner. But Judy Garland ALWAYS blocked out Gardner's name (replacing it with Elizabeth Taylor!), but then, Gardner always said that Garland and Turner scared her silly, they were the kind of girls who whispered and giggled throughout the class, and then they ran out and smoked, and they seemed so sophisticated and they made her feel like a hillbilly.

— darylchin53

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 7:14 PM, 03/23/2009

I would like to see Anne Hathaway make a musical. I'd prefer that she not make this movie, for two reasons. First, I don't see any way it won't be depressing from the first frame on. Second, it's almost certain that the filmmakers won't use Garland's voice, and that's a pet cinematic peeve of mine. We care about singers first and foremost because of their voices. To NOT use a singer's voice strikes me as proof of a fundamental lack of respect for a movie's subject, and a profound misjudgment of why we care about that singer in the first place. In Garland's case, I care about her because she sang "Over the Rainbow" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" better than anyone else ever has, not because her mother, and Louis B. Mayer, and all too often Judy herself, treated her badly. Had Clint Eastwood decided to have Forrest Whitaker play all of Charlie Parker's solos in "Bird," there would have been universal outrage, but for some reason it's not only acceptable, it's seen as proof of artistic integrity when an actor's voice replaces the voice that made the subject of a movie bio worth caring about in the first place. That's baffling to me. Having said all that, I'd probably see the movie anyway, since Hathaway and Amy Adams are the two young actresses working today who I most look forward to following over the coming years.

— wwolfe

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 8:25 PM, 03/23/2009

Wwolfe: There are many ways of telling the story of an artist who was as self-destructive as she was creatve. In "Get Happy," Gerald Clarke emphasizes Garland's gifts and her intelligence rather than highlighting her bad judgment and pharmaceutical dependency. I opened the book with great trepidation and closed it with hallelujahs and hosannas. It's quite a tour-de-force, a perfect fit for its subject.

— carrierickey

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 9:46 PM, 03/23/2009

Marion Cotillard? If she could play the miniscule and musical Piaf , Judy Garland should be a breeze. Plus she is really lovely in real life.

— Amy Heller

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 1:37 PM, 04/14/2009

I agree with Darylchin53 re the tandem of Tammy Blanchard/Judy Davis in Me and My Shadows. Both were brilliant prtrayals of Judy at opposite poles of her career.

— John Brumfield